Makkapakka3

Nuclear Bomb + @Shedletsky = Corpse.

@Shedletsky + Nuclear Bomb = World Domination

38 minutes ago from web

My first week as a professional game developer has been pretty awesome. Here are some of the things I have done:

MareNostrum

The supercomputers I am showing here are powerful almost beyond human understanding. The can map every molecule of the billions on a human DNA string, scrutinize at the atomic level the collision between two pieces of plutonium in an exploding bomb; or sketch the gravitational pull of every star in the galaxy. There are not questions that humans could grapple with given plenty of time, a notebook and a sharp pencil. These computers are not amiable assistants they are distant and sinister; cold and inscrutable. They are omniscient and omnipresent and these are not qualities in which we find a simulacrum of ourselves – these are qualities that describe the Divine. The problem is not that these computers might one day resemble humans. It is that they already resemble gods.

Cray XT2

BlueGene/L

Apotheosis

I’m afraid I’ve fallen behind on my blog again. It happens from time to time when I am very busy. I was going to post a huge picture bomb of all the things I have done in the past two weeks, but I think instead I will break them up and back post them. My main motivation for doing this is that I want people to see my Cylon Tea hack, and if I post everything at once, it will be buried. Mmm… Cylon Tea.

At the beginning of the quarter, Joanna and I took Thursday and Friday off and went on a mini-vacation to LA. I went to my first Seder ever at Jo’s dad’s house, which was fun. However, I did think that the stuff that was read from the little-book-whose-name-starts-with-an-h was a bit over-the-top jangsty. Groups in general seem to like to dwell on how they have been wronged or oppressed in the past.

Other highlights of the weekend included: getting up and writing my BS 12-page project proposal for CS194 at 10:30 on Thursday, so I could email it to Travis by 3pm, so he could print it out and hand it in for me, going to the Urth Cafe, and hanging out in Santa Monica. We spent about two hours in a large bookstore dedicated entirely to architecture and adjacent disciplines.

While in Santa Monica, we ate lunch at Ye Olde King’s Head – a British Pub. We also shopped at the Tudor House, which makes delicious chicken curry pies. The Tudor House also sold some very strange British food. I think that the Brits’ main motivation in conquering India was to bring the yummy food of the Indian man into the Empire. And who can blame them, really. Boiled beef? Ick.

YAY SKI TRIP! Covered in work as I am, I am already entertaining escapist fantasies about how awesome our ski trip to Tahoe on MLK weekend is going to be.

The remainder of this post is dedicated to my California mommy in honor of her manifest awesomeness. Jo’s dad was complaining about how the English language is being degraded and losing it’s subtle variations of meaning, but I think it’s better when everything is awesome.

–

i love friens
ds
ythey are the bombdiggityss
and lik ethe lieesttser ‘s
‘
it is our firensda s well
hi kids@!
i amon the ski trip
and by ‘amon’ i mean ‘am on’
not hte god of eypgyt
you knwo wat i mean
pharousahs, gods
they are the same
in egypts
wheeee
hi kids
vokda and v8 = friends
and tahoe = friends
and sales vonfereances = friends
vonfereances =- conferences
you knwo what i mean
and we are all firends
friends
yay friends
yay new paartmenets whihc i will move into tomorrow
and yay for all the poeple who mena so much to me

I played mafia last night with some of Doug’s frosh and also Brenden. It was strange at first, playing with people I didn’t know, but they were pretty cool and I made friends. The best part of the night by far was when Doug sniped himself…

The Sniper

Mafia Role
During the game setup, the moderator asks to see the sniper’s special signal (this can be something like pointing to one self or clapping or anything at all). Each night the sniper gets to put someone in his scope. During the day, he can flash the special signal to the moderator and the target dies instantly (like he was face-stabbed). The sniper can only kill once per game.

So it’s kind of like the suicide bomber, only awesome.

Thy rope of sands . . .
– George Herbert

The line is made up of an infinite number of points; the plane of an infinite number of lines; the volume of an infinite number of planes; the hypervolume of an infinite number of volumes. . . . No, unquestionably this is not — more geometrico — the best way of beginning my story. To claim that is it true is nowadays the convention of every made-up story. Mine, however, is true.

I live alone in a fourth-floor apartment on Belgrano Street, in Buenos Aires. Late one evening, a few months back, I heard a knock at my door. I opened it and a stranger stood there. He was a tall man, with nondescript features — or perhaps it was my myopia that made them seem that way. Dressed in gray and carrying a gray suitcase in his hand, he had an unassuming look about him. I saw at once that he was a foreigner. At first, he struck me as old; only later did I realize that I had been misled by his thin blond hair, which was, in a Scandinavian sort of way, almost white. During the course of our conversation, which was not to last an hour, I found out that he came from the Orkneys.

I invited him in, pointing to a chair. He paused awhile before speaking. A kind of gloom emanated from him — as it does now from me.

“I sell Bibles,” he said.

Somewhat pedantically, I replied, “In this house are several English Bibles, including the first — John Wiclif’s. I also have Cipriano de Valera’s, Luther’s — which, from a literary viewpoint, is the worst — and a Latin copy of the Vulgate. As you see, it’s not exactly Bibles I stand in need of.”

After a few moments of silence, he said, “I don’t only sell Bibles. I can show you a holy book I came across on the outskirts of Bikaner. It may interest you.”

He opened the suitcase and laid the book on a table. It was an octavo volume, bound in cloth. There was no doubt that it had passed through many hands. Examining it, I was surprised by its unusual weight. On the spine were the words “Holy Writ” and, below them, “Bombay.”

“Nineteenth century, probably,” I remarked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never found out.”

I opened the book at random. The script was strange to me. The pages, which were worn and typographically poor, were laid out in a double column, as in a Bible. The text was closely printed, and it was ordered in versicles. In the upper corners of the pages were Arabic numbers. I noticed that one left-hand page bore the number (let us say) 40,514 and the facing right-hand page 999. I turned the leaf; it was numbered with eight digits. It also bore a small illustration, like the kind used in dictionaries — an anchor drawn with pen and ink, as if by a schoolboy’s clumsy hand.

It was at this point that the stranger said, “Look at the illustration closely. You’ll never see it again.”

I noted my place and closed the book. At once, I reopened it. Page by page, in vain, I looked for the illustration of the anchor. “It seems to be a version of Scriptures in some Indian language, is it not?” I said to hide my dismay.

“No,” he replied. Then, as if confiding a secret, he lowered his voice. “I acquired the book in a town out on the plain in exchange for a handful of rupees and a Bible. Its owner did not know how to read. I suspect that he saw the Book of Books as a talisman. He was of the lowest caste; nobody but other untouchables could tread his shadow without contamination. He told me his book was called the Book of Sand, because neither the book nor the sand has any beginning or end.”

The stranger asked me to find the first page.

I laid my left hand on the cover and, trying to put my thumb on the flyleaf, I opened the book. It was useless. Every time I tried, a number of pages came between the cover and my thumb. It was as if they kept growing from the book.

“Now find the last page.”

Again I failed. In a voice that was not mine, I barely managed to stammer, “This can’t be.”

Still speaking in a low voice, the stranger said, “It can’t be, but it is. The number of pages in this book is no more or less than infinite. None is the first page, none the last. I don’t know why they’re numbered in this arbitrary way. Perhaps to suggest that the terms of an infinite series admit any number.”

Then, as if he were thinking aloud, he said, “If space is infinite, we may be at any point in space. If time is infinite, we may be at any point in time.”

His speculations irritated me. “You are religious, no doubt?” I asked him.

“Yes, I’m a Presbyterian. My conscience is clear. I am reasonably sure of not having cheated the native when I gave him the Word of God in exchange for his devilish book.”

I assured him that he had nothing to reproach himself for, and I asked if he were just passing through this part of the world. He replied that he planned to return to his country in a few days. It was then that I learned that he was a Scot from the Orkney Islands. I told him I had a great personal affection for Scotland, through my love of Stevenson and Hume.

“You mean Stevenson and Robbie Burns,” he corrected.

While we spoke, I kept exploring the infinite book. With feigned indifference, I asked, “Do you intend to offer this curiosity to the British Museum?”

“No. I’m offering it to you,” he said, and he stipulated a rather high sum for the book.

I answered, in all truthfulness, that such a sum was out of my reach, and I began thinking. After a minute or two, I came up with a scheme.

“I propose a swap, ” I said. “You got this book for a handful of rupees and a copy of the Bible. I’ll offer you the amount of my pension check, which I’ve just collected, and my black-letter Wiclif Bible. I inherited it from my ancestors.”

“A black-letter Wiclif!” he murmured.

I went to my bedroom and brought him the money and the book. He turned the leaves and studied the title page with all the fervor of a true bibliophile.

“It’s a deal,” he said.

It amazed me that he did not haggle. Only later was I to realize that he had entered my house with his mind made up to sell the book. Without counting the money, he put it away.

We talked about India, about Orkney, and about the Norwegian jarls who once ruled it. It was night when the man left. I have not seen him again, nor do I know his name.

I thought of keeping the Book of Sand in the space left on the shelf by the Wiclif, but in the end I decided to hide it behind the volumes of a broken set of The Thousand and One Nights. I went to bed and did not sleep. At three or four in the morning, I turned on the light. I got down the impossible book and leafed through its pages. On one of them I saw engraved a mask. The upper corner of the page carried a number, which I no longer recall, elevated to the ninth power.

I showed no one my treasure. To the luck of owning it was added the fear of having it stolen, and then the misgiving that it might not truly be infinite. These twin preoccupations intensified my old misanthropy. I had only a few friends left; I now stopped seeing even them. A prisoner of the book, I almost never went out anymore. After studying its frayed spine and covers with a magnifying glass, I rejected the possibility of a contrivance of any sort. The small illustrations, I verified, came two thousand pages apart. I set about listing them alphabetically in a notebook, which I was not long in filling up. Never once was an illustration repeated. At night, in the meager intervals my insomnia granted, I dreamed of the book.

Summer came and went, and I realized that the book was monstrous. What good did it do me to think that I, who looked upon the volume with my eyes, who held it in my hands, was any less monstrous? I felt that the book was a nightmarish object, an obscene thing that affronted and tainted reality itself.

I thought of fire, but I feared that the burning of an infinite book might likewise prove infinite and suffocate the planet with smoke. Somewhere I recalled rea
ding that the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest. Before retirement, I worked on Mexico Street, at the Argentine National Library, which contains nine hundred thousand volumes. I knew that to the right of the entrance a curved staircase leads down into the basement, where books and maps and periodicals are kept. One day I went there and, slipping past a member of the staff and trying not to notice at what height or distance from the door, I lost the Book of Sand on one of the basement’s musty shelves.

- Jorge Luis Borges, 1975

You have just visited my blog and been assaulted by culture.

I just noticed that I don’t have any pics of Can and Nora from Friday, Saturday and Sunday, when we were all in LA. Meeting Nora was interesting. Despite Joanna’s insistence to the contrary I had half-believed that Nora was some sort of operating system, but I met her and she didn’t seem to be. Har har. Just kidding, Can. Of course without pictures there is no evidence for this.

Last week was my third visit to LA within a year so we didn’t do all that much in the way of touristy things. We did go to Santa Barbara with Can and Nora one day – the traffic was terrible and it took 3 hours to get there. We ate at the Urth Cafe a lot. I got used to actually having a breakfast in the morning. We went to Laguna for two days and got stuck in terrible traffic. It was so bad that we had to get off the freeway and take the Pacific Coast Highway and that turned out to be faster. So you know how bad it must have been. Gogo pulled her scam at the Surf & Sand where we arrive earlier than our room could possibly be ready, and when they tell us it’s not ready, we ask for free drink vouchers at the bar (for while we wait). The waves were not that great at Laguna (contrary to Jo’s claim of monster killer waves for good boogey boarding), so we built a sand aquaduct (as opposed to castle). The second day in Laguna we wandered around town a bit and ran across an amazing rock shop (The Crystal Image). They had pieces there that were better than things I’ve seen in museums. Giant crystal balls, uncut emeralds, meteors, fossils – that kind of thing.

The one touristy thing we did do was go to the Getty. They have some famous Monets there and one of the better Renoirs. There was also a special exhibit consisting of 15-20 Rembrants. Still, the most impressive thing about the Getty is the site and building itself. It’s a very pleasant place to walk around for an afternoon and I would highly recommend it to anyone in the area. Jo liked it and she “hates two-dimensional art”. I figure that’s a pretty strong endorsement.

The only place we went all week in LA that there wasn’t terrible traffic is when we went to Paraside Cove with Joanna’s dad and step-mom the last day I was there (we saw pirates!). Paradise Cove was interesting, but a little crowded. From there we went to Zuma Beach for the rest of the afternoon. It was cold and windy, but we did go in the water and we did boogey board a bit. Fun stuff.

Mmm… Breakfast the at the Urth Cafe

Fuzz and a big sack of turtles

They go everywhere with us in Laguna

Hanging out at Laguna beach

I dragged Jo to all the art galleries in town

So we had to go for treats

“Heil!” Wait, no. I mean, “Hi!”

The monorail-ish tram to the Getty

The Getty is teh Awesome!

Inside the Getty

Gardens at the Getty

Pretty photograph

Shabbat with Joanna’s mom, Michelle, and Roger

Pirates at Paradise Cove!

IMISCA

Happy *campers* are best

“First the VUX, but they are such *silly cows* … they ask so much about the Androsynth we must *dance* with them.”

“*Happy campers* not going to *heavy space* *slide* near Chandrasekhar. Especially not ever! These are *fat* words.”

“Arilou can *slide*. Also Taalo.”

“Finally we find you, the *happy campers* and the Taalo *playground* for sliding through.”

Open source makes me a happy *camper*. Do not become *frumple* with my cryptic blog *bubbles*.